The Ringtail

There’s this man. He brings a huge truck and he parks it along the end of our houses. It’s not really in the way where it is, so no-one minds that it’s there. Over time it just becomes a part of our lives and we barely realise that we’ve just grown to accommodate into our daily routines.

One day the man comes up and says, “I’m just sitting in my truck all day doing nothing, and I have pretty good relations with a lot of people around the world, if you need anything tracked down, just ask”. It seems too good to be true, but we start asking and he starts returning. He doesn’t actually fetch things for us, but he puts us in touch with people who can. The more of our neighbours who used him, the better he gets.

A while later he comes up and says, “You know, My truck is just sitting there, perhaps I could collect all the mail for your street. You can come and get it from me, it’s only a short walk after all, and think of the convenience - I have a big storage area so I could hold onto your parcels and all, save you room”. We need to remember to check in with him every day, but yes it does seem convenient. It’s free and he’s got enough storage for all of us.

A while later he comes up and says, “You know, I could store a lot of other stuff in here as well. I’ve got enough room for you to get rid of a lot of other stuff too; keep your house tidy.” Seems good.

Next time I go to collect my mail he stops me and asks if I’ve heard of this new magazine that’s coming out. “It’s really suited to you I think - I’ve been monitoring the mail you get and the things you store with me and I’m pretty sure it’s right up your street. Here’s a flyer - call them if you fancy trying it.” Odd.

Next time I go to collect my mail he does the same. And the next time. We used to have quite a mix of smaller vans and cars coming along that road, but there’s no room for them now. We don’t miss them though, and the man doesn’t seem to recommend them in any searches he does for them. I guess they’re just not as good as we used to think they were or more people would still need them.

I ask him to get me a new DVD and when I come to pick it up he first offers me three others that I have no intention of buying. “Sorry,” he says, “but these people have paid me to try and get you to buy these first.” Not much of a hold up with just three, but a bit inconvenient. Still, it’s a free service so what should I expect. As I leave he says, “This new shampoo is just what you need. I saw the letters you’ve been sending your sister and I agree that you probably need some more control.”

I pop down to find out the address for my cousin - it’s on the letter she sent me, and why bother writing it down elsewhere when his truck is always there? No problem getting it, but he makes me sit down and watch a short video first. It’s about a new car I probably won’t ever get, but it seems strange. He’s still free though.

When I came out yesterday the truck was gone. Taken away for maintenance said the sign. He was back in the afternoon, but I missed a deadline for sending in a job application as I needed to double-check some facts in one of the magazine articles that I’ve started letting him collate for me. Perhaps I could do what my neighbour did and pay him to let me keep a copy of the articles in the house.

This morning, the truck is gone. I have an invoice through my door, and apparently I can have personal access to it every other day, for a fee. The man has also promised to stop reading my mail and going through my things if I pay him double.

I think the strangest thing is remembering why we trusted him so much in the first place. And I’m sure that truck was smaller when it got here, that it didn’t block quite so many other roads.

I’ve been trying to find a new creative outlet for a few months. I’m a bit of a hobby freak and have turned my hands to quite a lot of things over the years - from origami to marquetry to ornithology - but I have been struggling for a while to find something new which really captured my interest. Watching the recent series of the wonderful Mastercrafts on BBC has given me a new perspective on why this might be, and a desire to take something beyond ‘I can do that’ to ‘I am actually quite good at that’.

I think Mastercrafts has been a great programme for two main reasons: it’s wonderful to watch people talking about and doing something they are passionate about, and it’s also nice to remember every now and then the satisfaction that comes from working hard to acquire deep knowledge and true craft. Too much today focuses on the short-term, do-it-well-enough-to-get-by ideal; on the ability that technology and affluent society has given us to buy in pseudo-skill.

An example? I went on a ’snake photography day’ a couple of years ago. The day was held on heathland in Dorset where snakes are found - all three main UK species if my herpetological knowledge is reliable. I was very excited that we would be shown around the heath, learning about the habitat of the snakes and, perhaps, being lucky enough to see and photograph them. Nothing is more thrilling than observing animals in their native habitat, particularly a habitat that has suffered the depletion that heathland has in the UK over the years. The reality was disappointing. There were two snake-handlers with us on the day who had captive snakes and lizards which they manipulated for us, positioning them to get us the perfect photos of these creatures in their natural environment. Instead of a day learning valuable knowledge and field skills everyone ended up with about 2000 almost identical shots of the same snakes. Instead of having to combine fieldcraft and photographic ability, the most we had to do was make sure the handler’s fingers weren’t in shot each time. A number of people on the trip were regulars who had also done a similar thing with tigers, wolves and bears at the local zoo, although by the look of the gear they had you’d have thought they were off to Kenya on a photoshoot for National Geographic for a month.

Another example? My local fishing shop staff often tell of people who come in and spend upward of £2000 in one go to get everything they need to start fishing. They then spend a few weekends on waters that are overstocked, catching fish that are on first-name terms with most of the anglers who fish there, then sell their gear the first time they have a blank session.

Now, I’m not saying for one minute that people shouldn’t approach things in this way, or that all people who invest a lot of money in a hobby have no real talent. And I’m certainly not saying that the purists are somehow more entitled to the hobby than others - those who are still using split-cane rods and centrepin reels to catch pure, wild fish, or those who are stalking animals in tweed suits and deerstalkers, taking photos of them on bakelite cameras and developing them in their own dark rooms. In my view the extremes are just as bad as one another, and people at both ends can be equally damaging when they offer advice to newcomers on internet fora and mailing lists.

What I am saying is that you don’t need great gear to do well, you need to understand the craft of your hobby and have the right gear to do what you want to do. If you want to take photos for glossy magazines and billboards then you probably do need some high-end gear. If you want to compete at world-class level you need the right gear to fish alongside the pros. But don’t think that having the gear for one minute means you can take those photos or win that championship. If you take the time to learn the craft, to really appreciate what you need to do with the tools and to be able to get the best out of lower-down-the-range gear, then you might just stand a chance of succeeding when you do get your hands on the right gear. There’s a famous saying with pro photographers when asked the question, “Wow, what exposure time did you use to get that shot?” - “1/8 of a second and 35 years”. You won’t get great shots by using the same gear as the pros or by using the same settings as the pros. Photography is as much to do with gear and settings as great literature is to do with spelling. You can only get really good at something by investing time, passion and application in the craft.

An illustrative anecdote? When I was a kid I was working with my dad in a school over the holidays. There was a horrible little drum kit there that I banged around on for hours on the first day - much to the delight of my Dad. It was a truly horrible sounding thing that was a good few steps away from being usable. On day two one of my Dad’s mates was working with us too. He was a jazz drummer who played every now and then in clubs and pubs. At lunchtime he sat behind the kit and, after a few exploratory taps and tests, proceeded to produce some wonderful sounds out of it.

With that in mind, I’ve started to practice more on my guitar, learning a little music theory, strengthening my fingers and listening to people I can learn from. I have everything I need to get as far as I want to go with music, the only thing I need to invest this time, is time.

Merlin Mann has put a nice post up about the importance of backing up. He asserts the ‘holy trinity’ of backing up:

• If it’s not automated, it’s not a real backup.
• If it’s not redundant, it’s not a real backup.
• If it’s not regularly rotated off-site, it’s not a real backup.

All good stuff, and I recommend you take a read of his article and the Daring Fireball article that inspired it; it’s all good ‘cautionary tale for our times’ stuff. I’m not the greatest fan of Merlin’s style of writing — I find he sometimes talks in language that is too absolute for stuff that is grey around the edges — but his blog always makes me think deeply about the things he writes about. As a blogger I think that puts him in the top 99.8th percentile.

Why do I say his voice is too absolute at times? Well, a case in point is saying that “if it’s not automated then its not a real backup”. As long as you have a plan that you stick to which keeps your backup as safe and current as it needs to be, then you have a real backup. I used to automate my backups but found that I missed too many by not having my laptop plugged in and connected to my backup drive at the right time, and then cancelling the backup when I plugged in because it wasn’t a convenient time to run. Automating it actually made my backup less safe, and manually choosing when was best for me in the day to run it kept me far more current. I know that Merlin means “automation is the best way to get you doing your backup as regularly as you need to, and that’s what we’re really aiming for here”, but the minute you use that absolute language it sounds like there is no room for the grey around the edges. And don’t even get me started on just how flawed the concept of ‘Inbox zero’ really is.